At a ‘Good Governance’ event, focused around ‘Digital India’, Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Minister of Communications & Information Technology, announced several ‘Digital India’ related e-services and products. At the occasion, Prasad said, “Digital India is something we owe to the people of India.”. The event saw the inauguration of new 23 products / eServices to achieve ambitious project of Digital India. We take a brief look at the top 10:

1. Digital India: India Post-Payment Bank
India Post will launch its payment bank by March 2017. As many as 40 international financial conglomerates, including World Bank and Barclays, have shown interest to partner with the Postal Department for the payment bank.

2. Digital India: NIC Data Centre at Bhubaneswar
The new data centre for the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in Odisha is expected to get operational by September 2016. The 40,000-sq ft data center entails an investment Rs.189 crore, and would be a fully cloud-enabled data center.

3. Digital India: National Centre of Geo-Informatics
National Centre of Geo-Informatics will be GIS platform for sharing and collaborating GIS data source, location based analytics and ‘decision support system’ serving to government departments across the country. The National Centre of Geo-Informatics has been approved as an independent division of Media Lab Asia, an organisation of DietY. The project cost is Rs 98.28 crore fora period of three years. “This will prepare GIS map of India which can be used for planning public services in India,” said Prasad.

4. Digital India: e-Payment Portal
PayOnline is one of the key initiatives under Digital India. PayOnline provides On Demand Governance and Services electronic and cashless financial transactions. It is an online payment platform to pay government taxes, bills and fees online. An Electronic Receipt portal, PayOnline is fully compatible with smart mobile or tablet, so a citizen can pay using own mobile or tablet as well. PayOnline is the comprehensive platform for all government payments – inter-ministerial, vendor transactions or small payments by citizens of India for government services – to be made electronically. The portal offers netbanking from more than 67 banks.

5. Digital India: Digital Locker Mobile App
DigiLocker is a platform for issuance and verification of documents & certificates in a digital way, thus eliminating the use of physical documents. Indian citizens who sign up for a DigiLocker account get a dedicated cloud storage space that is linked to their Aadhaar (UIDAI) number. Organizations that are registered with Digital Locker can push electronic copies of documents and certificates (e.g. driving license, Voter ID, School certificates) directly into citizens lockers. Citizens can also upload scanned copies of their legacy documents in their accounts. These legacy documents can be electronically signed using the eSign facility.
This e-facility now can accessed on mobile devices via its app, available on Android and iOS. “Now you can store your documents on the locker directly from your mobile phone,” added Prasad.

6 Digital India: Text To Speech Technology in Indian Languages
Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) Programme initiated by the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. India has the objective to develop information processing tools to facilitate human machine interaction in Indian languages and to develop technologies to access multilingual knowledge resources.
Consortium mode project has been initiated to develop and deploy Text to Speech system for in nine regional languages, which are Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Gujarati, Odiya, and Assamese.

7. Digital India: Olabs for Schools
The government launched an online lab for school students, where science lab experiments can be taught online. This is to help those students who do not science labs facilities.

8. Digital India: Special Manpower Development Program for Chips to System Design
With a vision to make India high-end Very Large ScaleIntegration (VLSI) design destination, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has launched Special Manpower Development Program for Chips to System Design entailing investments of Rs 99.72 crore for the programme for five years.Under this programme, in addition to generation of more than 50,000 specialized manpower in the area of VLSI, 10 cluster projects for development of systems are being launched. The initiative aims to achieve the vision of ‘make in India’ and to reduce import of electronic items.

9. Digital India: ISEA phase 2 programme
The Government of India has launched phase 2 of Information Security Education and Awareness (ISEA) Project to solve the issues around cyber security in India. DeitY had approved a project in 2005 entitled Information Security Education and Awareness (ISEA) which was completed in 2014 and now it has launched Phase II of this project with the total outlay of Rs. 96.08 crore for a period of 5 years.

10. Digital India: STPI Centres
Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) was established under the Department of Electronics & Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India in 1991 with an objective to implement STP Scheme, set-up and manage infrastructure facilities and provide other services like technology assessment and professional training.At the ‘Good Governance Day’ celebrations, the government announced of 8 more STPI centres by September 2018. These centres would be, 2 in Bihar, 2 in UP, and 4 in Odisha.